A recent customer request resulted in our Professional Services group developing a Contact Center (CC) Group Alert Service. This case is a good illustration of building a new application leveraging an existing ShoreTel Contact Center feature.
The customer wanted their Contact Center agents to know whether calls were in queue or not. They wanted them to really know…with a lighted beacon installed in their call center. When calls were in queue the beacon should flash continuously.
Alert beacons are common in call centers and, using a simple electronic device known as a ring detector, a phone call can be made to trigger all kinds of lamps, horns, door openers, etc. (Non-endorsed example: http://www.vikingelectronics.com/products/view_product.php?pid=169)
ShoreTel’s Contact Center provides a Real-Time Group Activity event feed, which can broadcast events, including the number of calls in queue for each Contact Center group. Professional Services developers created a Windows service that subscribes to the event feed, and when calls are in specific queues, call out to a pre-configured telephone number, continuously until calls are no longer in the queue. The customer simply connects the target analog telephone to their ring detector device controlling the beacon. The beacon signals when calls are in queue, and goes dark when the queue is idle.
Each Contact Center group can be configured to be associated to a different target phone number so multiple alert devices could be used, one for each group, perhaps with different color beacons.
To explore enhanced and custom applications like this one, contact ShoreTel Professional Services at ProfessionalServices@shoretel.com or +1 800-425-9385 x3331.